Saturday 8 December 2012

Bird feeding

With snow starting to cover the land, I've started hanging balls of lard , a  bird feeder with seeds and one with peanuts out in my cherry and pear trees to help my feathered friends through the winter.
This sunny morning I saw quite a few of them come by.

While I was replacing the empty ones this morning, this robin started eating while I was still in the garden! He didn't even fly away when I came back outside with my camera :).
 
The great tit ( parus major ) is clearly recognizable by the black and white pattern on his head
and the yellow on his belly.

 Even a great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) coming to feed.

The goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) eat only the seeds from these large weeds and nothing else. I try to sow some of these weeds each year, but I haven't found out which species they are.

 Blue finch (Cyanistes caeruleus) not the sharpest picture, but you can clearly see the blue cap )

 The sparrows always come in larger groups. This is a female.

While up in the tree , the robin is waiting for the sparrows to finish eating.
They are called 'red breast' in Dutch and 'robin red breast' in England (later shortened to robin).
Curiously the colour is clearly orange, but until the 16th century orange was unknown in English as a colour , event though the word was used for that fruit since the 13nd century.


This finch is waiting next to him.

1 comment:

Kumiko said...

Wow,they're so cute!
I haven't seen wild birds so closely like this.They're so lovely and beautiful.
Thank you for sharing these wonderful photos.
I want to feed them,too :)